Grizzlies hope to trend up in 2024

COOK—With just one senior on last season’s roster, the North Woods football team had to go through some growing pains compared to previous year.

A year older and with a much larger pool of experienced players to work with, the Grizzlies are looking to see how much they can bounce back from last year’s 3-6 season.

Through the first two weeks of camp, head coach Joel Anderson says he’s seen a lot of positives from his squad. Perhaps most importantly, he’s already seeing some level of consistency that he wasn’t able to see a year ago.

“We bring back the core of our snaps both offensively and defensively. We’ve added some new faces and I think the first two weeks have been pretty solid.

“We didn’t really get a lot of consistency last year based on a number of things. My team was very young, very, very green and that’ll happen once in a while if you graduate a lot of seniors and it showed.

“I think a lot of those guys took a good leap forward in the last year and they know it’s a lot about the mental preparation and understanding the game plan versus just being out there and not understand the role you’re taking on. With that in mind, there’s definitely been a lot of good things happening out here in the first few days of practice.”

Compared to just the one senior from last season, Anderson says it’s promising to have higher numbers at every grade level this year.

“We’ve picked up a couple more guys. Now we’re at seven seniors, 6-7 juniors, 5-6 sophomores and then five freshmen. Everybody from the sophomores to the juniors and seniors played a lot of minutes last year so it feels like we might have some more cohesion there than we did before.”

Returning seniors include Nick Abramson and Kaden Gornik in the backfield as well as Talen Jarshaw, Trajen Barto and Mason Ruchasky. Louie Panichi and Aiden Hartway also return to the sport after a ew years away.

“Those are just the seniors but really all the juniors coming back as well played a lot of good minutes and made some nice steps forward. I think we’re a team that’s going to continue to get better every week and start to understand football more in terms of the game and how we need to prepare each week.”

Those juniors and seniors have paved the way when it comes to leadership as well.

“These are the guys making sure that everyone’s in the right sport and that we’re getting through our drills at a high level. They’re aware and making sure as a whole we’re understanding our roles and understanding the best way to help the team. We’re helping each other learn and helping the new faces work through the offense and defense. I feel like we’re leaps and bounds ahead of where we were this time last year.”

In terms of his team’s offensive identity, Anderson expects his team to use their athleticism to make things happen. That’ll be especially true for their backfield.

“We had a lot of guys put in a lot of time in during the offseason so I expect us to be athletic. The vast majority of our experience is from those guys in the backfield and it’s going to be very important that they’re making the right reads, getting the right blocks and all of that. Strong, athletic backs will be huge for us. We have to be faster and more athletic than our opponents. We can’t be the smaller guys on the field and be slower. That’s never a good combination in football.”

The Grizzlies will travel to MI-B this weekend for a series of scrimmages hosted by the Rangers and then will make the four-hour drive during week one to take on Bertha-Hewitt.

“That was a result of some other schools not being able to field a team this year so we needed to pick up a game and it so happens we’ll be traveling to Bertha. It’ll be a good test for us off the get go with a very unfamiliar opponent. Hopefully we’re prepared enough at the base level and we’re able to recognize things and play our own football game.”

In the end, Anderson is hoping to hammer home to his team the importance of preparation.

“You gotta be able to play the game you’re prepared to play and that’s what we’ll be looking for. Beyond that game we have a good number of familiar foes that we’ve seen before. The big thing for us will be understanding the mental part of every game and knowing how to prepare and improve each and every day.

“I’m hoping we put the best product we can on the field. When you have as many seniors and juniors that we do, you can’t have the excuse of being green. We have to put it together at this point.”